What On Earth is Going On?

What On Earth is Going On?

In our journey through the ages from being particles of stardust to our current selves, we have come to a place now where we are being pushed to take a leap into a new and different way of being human. Through many past generations we have developed the incredible gift of intellect and have begun to understand and control the world within us and around us. We have learned to express our intellectual power, building a world that would have been completely unimaginable only one thousand years ago. Yet we cannot rest comfortably here, for the world we have built now presents us with challenges which cannot be solved at the level we utilized to build it. We are pressed to evolve again in order to survive this new situation.

In the process of developing this capacity, our intellect has overshadowed any sense of who we are beyond itself. Intellect frames who we are in terms of ideas, temporarily blinding us to the reality behind those ideas. We have been caught in a golden trap where our lives are for the most part confined within a web of thinking, unable to escape from relating to everyone and everything through our ideas about them.

Yet in each generation, some small percentage of our ancestors have pursued various contemplative traditions, building an ongoing connection with what lies beyond intellect, a golden thread if you will — a human capacity which portends our possible escape from the trap our minds have us caught in, shining a light on our collective passageway ahead. We have planted for ourselves the seed of our next stage of development and it is growing. It is the capacity to open up to what is, to experience the fullness of life without filtering and limiting everything through our preconceived ideas about it. Because of the nature of the challenges we are presented with at this time in history, it is time now for this seed to grow from isolation into the mainstream of human life – from the cloister into the marketplace.

All around the world, the fruits of this seed are beginning to develop and ripen. People are beginning to wake up as if from a long sleep. Contact with those pioneers stimulates the same capacities in others and a new and wonderful contagion spreads. New possibilities become visible that could not be seen before. The felt-sense is that of having a new door of perception has opened. Life is radiant with vitality, people are seen as unique expressions of divine grace, the answers to the previously intractable world issues are already in the room.

Intellect is no longer is in charge of having to figure everything out and can assume a new, more do-able role as servant of something beyond itself and is less subject to initiating self-defense type activities and more prone to just exploring what is possible. The thought-based operational self which the intellect created to try to run everything and survive, is no longer in change. We find ourselves a part of something larger and much more stable and secure. Intellect becomes the most amazing tool.

To be alive now, at this critical juncture between the potential for humans to meet the challenges of our time or self-destruct is both a privilege and an opportunity. Many people are thriving as pioneers here in the midst of the pain of the dying of the old order. This is truly a renaissance of human nature arising at a time when the old world’s forms, organizations and thought processes are beginning to fail us. Many people are already beginning to build on the new possibilities, even as they are dwarfed by the weight of what is failing all around them. New structures spring up like weeds.

Because this is just beginning, these pioneers often can feel isolated and overwhelmed. Yet I would argue that these far-flung pioneers of a new humanity are in fact already all parts of one movement stretching across the globe. I would also argue that it is the work of this time to begin to make connections between ourselves, forming a network which transcends all the differences once separating us from each other and solidifies our true unity in the oneness of all life in a way that we can palpably feel and be supported by. We have the technology to form this network, and all around us humanity is beginning to awaken.

The Caterpillar, the Butterfly & the World

Imagine for a moment that you are a caterpillar who is finishing up with caterpillar life. You have instinctively wrapped yourself in a cocoon. Your old life is dissolving. Nothing works anymore. It looks like chaos. It looks like the end.

Then, in your imagination, put yourself in the position of being the butterfly coming into being as the caterpillar finishes. It feels to you now like the caterpillar has recycled himself to support your new life. Caterpillar chaos and death (?) seems to be allowing room for and actually supporting your becoming something else – something quite new.

One thing we can do in these times of upheaval and turmoil in the world, is to consider this metaphor to begin to look at situations through the eyes of the butterfly. These new eyes focus not so much on the destruction of the old but see most clearly the arising of a new possibility for humankind.